At tonight's event, I was wearing a purple Agnes B. knit dress, Italian riding boots, my leopard coat from Edinburgh, feather barrette from a shop in Montreal's Mile End, and what caught the most attention, as it has nonstop since I got it on Sunday? The yellow "My Melodake" keychain from Opening Ceremony that I clipped to my purse. I am now desirous of the other five, natch.

I am so lucky to have such brilliant colleagues, and I never forget it. I spent this afternoon filling in a spreadsheet for advance media for Ben Greenman'sPlease Step Backand my partner-in-crime Clara Heyworth, publicist extraordinaire for Melville House, sent the above in return. You can see why I said I'd wait for her to try the new bánh mì shop. Also rocking my world in 2009: Julia Prosser at Simon & Schuster, who I'll be working with (again!) to get the word out about Jean Thompson's Do Not Deny Me in June, and Carrie Majer at Bloomsbury, who I'm collaborating with on Mark Sarvas' Harry, Revised in April, and meeting tomorrow at my favorite place for hot chocolate in the city. Can't wait.

Tonight as I was walking after dinner, down Bowery, I was transfixed by the jewelry window at New York Adorned, and a gold snake ring. My eye has been drawn to a similar item in the past, but on this evening I had a glass of wine and felt the familiar coil of desire tightening in my stomach and sending a thousand electric flashes of impulse per second towards my hand, the one holding my purse. In the end, I walked on by. This version is more classical and less Studio 54 and I almost prefer it, "an understated and elegant version of an ancient and timeless symbol."

Once I was on a trip that required multiple flights and the first leg was cancelled at the gate and it was only a five-day trip (including Trans-Atlantic travel) and my last vacation for who knows how long and someone was waiting for me and I ended up spending about a month's rent all told to get to my destination (to be fair, I thought there was a chance I might not miss my next, nonrefundable, flight). It was extremely stressful and I cried a lot and I also had the unnerving experience of flying across an ocean with absolutely no one in the world that I know knowing where I was; I was on a different flight, on a different airline, flying into a different airport than scheduled, after running across a parking lot to catch the very last flight out of JFK. Once I landed in London, I caught a cab at Heathrow to Gatwick, and about halfway there, the driver informed me that I would miss my flight to the next country by about ten minutes. At first, I thought I might just... melt from the stress and disappointment. As he went on about how I could go to Brighton for the day until the next flight left (it was an uncommon destination, could be later that day, could be the next day), I tuned out and thought about the moment I was in. At the time, the pound to dollar exchange was exactly one to two. So it was a three hundred dollar cab, if you can believe it. And I am in no way the kind of person who has ever had that kind of money in my entire life, and probably never will, and even if I did, that's not what I would spend it on. Anyway, I looked at the green countryside as we sped down the highway and I thought about how I was in a place I'd never seen before, and might never see again, and I was alive, and I was on my way somewhere, and stretched my legs out and and breathed, and in the end, it's turned out to be one of the nicest memories of my whole life to date. I think of it every time I see or think of a black cab, and I smile.

“Dzanc Books is proud to announce that it will publish a novel by Jonathan Baumbach in early 2011, entitled Dreams of Molly… Steve Gillis said, ‘We at Dzanc are very excited to publish this newest work from a true American original.’” More.

I swore up and down all weekend that I would take the day off to relax today and of course I chose to work for hours instead just as I have pretty much every day as long as I can remember. Now it's nearly twilight and I'm worn out and furious with my lack of resolve, so I'll just say the hell with it and go to Popeye's and then read Reborn, Susan Sontag's youthful diaries, which is exactly what I'm in the mood for:

"1/6/58. H back; games of sex, love, friendship, banter, melancholy resumed. Tells of a whorish, splendid time in Dublin. Christ, she's beautiful! and hard to be with, even on the plane of her own duplicity. Egotistical, edgy, mocking, bored with me, bored with Paris, bored with herself.

We've taken a high-ceilinged, white room in [Grand] Hotel de l'Univers, rue Gregoire de Tours, for the next nine days."

This morning I was thinking about the tedious expectation of Valentine's Day, in that the best gifts I've ever received were an utter surprise and so how could anything that happens today feel truly transcendent? Last night I was listening to a song a man once recorded for me, after I mentioned that I liked it but wished it were different in a specific way. And of course, who could forget the office of remote giving, as I used to affectionately call it? A few minutes ago I was going through my jewelry and found a card at the bottom, sent by a faraway friend with a pair of stockings from Tokyo embroidered with cartoonish stitches, and so I scanned it above as it charms me all over again every time I come across it. It's one sentence scrawled on the back of a business card, and says, May you always bear the scars of my affection. Indeed.